We open our celebration week by welcoming back our first ever guest goddess blogger, Carly Phillips! A huge New York Times best-seller, Carly’s fresh and funny contemporaries have taken the romance world (and all of us on Mt. Oly!) by storm.

Everyone, say hello to the phenomenal Carly Phillips!

CARLY PHILLIPS TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

I was thrilled when the Goddesses asked me to return to the Mount! Of course, I’m not a Goddess in the real world. Far from it.

Let’s take an average day – like today – and let me show you what I mean:

6:00 am: Alarm goes off. Yell for daughters to get up.
6:10 am: Yell again for daughters to get up.
6:20 am: Yell again, but this time, insist they each answer me so I know they’re up.
6:30 am: Get up and fix breakfast.
7:00 am: Daughters leave for school.
7:30 am: Shower and dress for 9:30 doctor’s appointment
8:30 am: Realize appointment is at 9 and rush madly around house.
9:00 am: Doctor’s appointment.
9:21 am: Headache.
10:20 am: Dropped mother’s car off at gas station to get flat tire repaired.
11:00 am: Back home to do some paperwork
11:30 am: Plumber arrived to fix broken master bathroom toilet.
Noon: Lunch
12:15 pm: Oldest daughter called from school with bad headache.
12:30 pm: Drove to school to pick up daughter.
1:00 pm: Made important phone calls.
2:00 pm: Post office to mail important packages.
3:00 pm: To school to pick up other daughter.
4:00 pm: Got home as husband did. Drove him back to the gas station to get mother’s repaired car.
4:30 pm: Picked up youngest daughter for her doctor’s appointment.
5:45 pm: Headed home to make dinner.
5:50 pm: Found dog ‘presents’ on kitchen floor.
6:00 pm: Mopped kitchen floor. Twice.
7:00 pm: Dinner.
8:00 pm: Cleaned up after dinner.
9:00 pm: Finally settle down to do some work.

Who’s the goddess now?

Like all women who work and are mothers and wives and daughters, writers are busy. Though we get to write stories we love, we certainly don’t feel very ‘glamorous’ in our day-to-day lives. That’s why I love the internet. I can be a (plot) monkey in our happy jungle one day (www.plotmonkeys.com); and a goddess on another. Most of all, I get to meet and greet readers and people who enjoy the same things I do – a good book and a computer to hide behind!

Do your days, like mine, get so filled with family and life business that it’s hard to get your work done? What keeps you from completing the things you most want to do? Has the internet been a good escape for you from the real worries of day-to-day life/work/parenting/etc. or is it just another distraction?

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I have a new habit–whenever I start a book, I choose a guy to represent my hero in my head, then put pics of him on my laptop. Here’s the one for Let Sleeping Rogues Lie (coming out a week from Tuesday, ahem):

You do realize that no FROS by me would be complete without Richard Armitage, don’t you? He’s definitely the guy I thought of for my hero Anthony.

Without further ado, here’s the hero for my upcoming novella:

Yes, that’s Jake Gyllenhaal. And for the book I’m working on now?

Rodrigo Santoro from Love, Actually. Yum! Cousin Michael’s book is after Rodrigo’s. Can’t wait to pick one for HIM!!

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I’ve always had a soft spot for a man who knows how to use a rope. I can tell this guy isn’t just good with his rope — he’s INCREDIBLE.

How do I know? Look at his abs. Abs never lie and those abs say “This man knows how to use a rope.”

I’ve just been assailed with a bold desire to untie his chaps with my teeth.

Did I say that out loud?

All together now, m’dears . . . RIDE ‘EM, COWBOY!!!

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My two old labs, Hugo and Maude, turned 13 last month. According to my vet, who assesses dog age based on years and girth, that puts Hugo over 100 people years and Maude in her 90s. They are really that old, too—they are very arthritic, they can’t hear so well anymore, they can’t see so well, and I’m not sure they can even smell very well. They cost me a fortune in doggie pain pills every month (I even get them from Canada and they are still expensive). They have to eat at certain times (sunrise, and like my parents, around 5), and they have to go to the yard a lot…but I love my two old dogs. They have been my stalwart companions for 13 years. We have explored a lot of ground together, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to write a book without them at my feet.

However, I know their time is not long. They move a little slower each day and there have been a couple of episodes of them being disoriented. And now, Maudie has this hack that’s troublesome. I am ignoring it as long as I can…

My family asks about them. They ask what we’ll do when they are gone. They aren’t being morbid or insensitive—they just see what I see. Half the family says, get another puppy now! Ack! We can’t do that—two old dogs are enough work without trying to train a puppy on top of it. The other half of the family says, don’t get a dog, they are too much work! Get a cat!

A cat.

I have always had dogs. I have never had cats. I mean, yeah, I can see the appeal—low maintenance, don’t need you to live, drag in interesting things from their nightly prowling…

But a cat seems like a major life shift, a whole new way of viewing the world. I almost think I’d need a different personality—the kind that doesn’t mind if my affections are constantly rejected.

What about you? Are you a dog person or a cat person? If you are both, how do you manage? What other pets do you have (husbands don’t count)?

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We are lucky here on the Mt. I mean really, REALLY lucky. Not only did we score Susan Elizabeth Phillips for two FULL (and YUMMY) days, but we’ve also managed to beg — er, I mean, tempt — New York Times bestselling novelist Carly Phillips into kicking off our birthday week!

That’s right, THE Carly Phillips. The New York Times bestselling Carly Phillips. The woman we all want to be.

THAT Carly Phillips.

Years ago, Carly gave up legal briefs in favor of writing romance and ever since she’s worked hard to deliver a sexy fun read in her twenty-five plus published books. Carly Phillips started her writing career with Harlequin Temptation in 1999 with Brazen, and she’s never strayed far from home!

In 2002 Carly’s book, The Bachelor, was chosen by Kelly Ripa on Live! With Regis and Kelly for her Reading with Ripa Bookclub, making it the first romance to be selected by a nationally televised bookclub.

Carly lives in Purchase, New York, with her husband, two daughters and a frisky soft-coated wheaten terrier who acts like their third child. More information on Carly can be found at her website or her writers’ blog!

Stop by Monday as we welcome the funny, sparkly Carly Phillips to The Goddess Blogs!

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We’re thrilled to have the phenomenally talented, gracious, and lovely author, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, with us for another wonderful day! Let’s give her yet another big, warm Mt. Oly welcome!

Blog 2, Food Memories and Romance

Attention, class! Please review yesterday’s blog before you join us for today’s discussion about food memory and romance. I was nineteen when I had my first serious romance, and my boyfriend was twenty-one. His favorite drink was a sloe gin fizz. Shouldn’t that have told me something?

The boy I pined over after I broke up with Sloe Gin Fizz only took me on one date. A Chinese restaurant. He suggested I order duck, which I did because I wanted to please him. Lesson learned. Never eat duck just to please a man. He didn’t ask me out again.

When I think about food memories and my husband, I think about pancakes. Of the thousands of meals I’ve fixed him over the years, blueberry pancakes are his favorite. Even a photo of a blueberry pancake reminds me of him. I remember the festive foods of the 70s that I fixed as a young bride: cheese and meat fondues, franks with grape jelly and cocktail sauce for hors d’oeuvres, my sickeningly sweet spinach salad. My husband also loves potato chips, which score high on my internal junk food evaluation scale, but which also make me smile.

When Zach, our youngest, was two, he suffered from numerous ear infections, and I was terrified he was going to end up with hearing loss. One day my husband went in the kitchen to sneak some potato chips while Zach was upstairs playing. Bill opened the package with the barest whisper of rattling paper. Immediately, from the second floor, I heard our two-year-old cry out, “Cheeps! Cheeps!” As he ran downstairs, I nearly wept with joy. Obviously, his hearing was just fine.

But I’m getting sidetracked. This is about food and romance. Food and boyfriends─good and bad. Food and husbands, significant others, men we’ve longed for from afar, men we should never have longed for. Conjure up anything?

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The Goddesses from Mt. Oly welcome the truly talented, gracious, and absolutely adorable Susan Elizabeth Phillips! A New York Times best-selling author, Susan is with us for TWO entire days so join us in giving her a big, warm Mr. Oly welcome!

CHILDHOOD FOOD MEMORIES

There are foods we love, foods we hate, and, most interesting to me, foods that have become indelibly linked in our memory bank with the events and people of our childhood.

For example, my maternal grandmother was very old when I was born, and I only have two pure memories of her. In one, she’s standing over her farmhouse stove stirring a pot of oatmeal, which was creamy and salty, like nothing I’ve tasted since. In my other, she’s studying a box of chocolates trying to make up her mind which to choose.

My paternal grandmother had a distant relationship with my mother. Either she wasn’t welcome in Mother’s kitchen or she didn’t like to cook because I don’t have a single food memory of her.

In my earliest food memory, I’m four years old, sitting in my friend’s kitchen eating a bowl of tomato soup with something exotic floating on top─oyster crackers. My father loved pickled pigs’ feet, and every time I see a bottle of those disgusting things, I have warm memories of the two of us side by side munching on them.

When I think of our family camping trips, I remember the kerosene-laced scent of bacon and eggs cooked on our old Coleman stove, and a wave of nostalgia comes over me. A slice of gelatinous lemon meringue pie brings back the memory of my mother’s pie, which she baked as a special treat for my father. It oozed all over the plate and is, to this day, the best lemon meringue pie I’ve ever tasted.

My childhood Thanksgivings are forever linked in my mind, not with turkey and stuffing, but with the precious glass of Mogen David wine my cousin Kathleen and I were permitted to drink. As for my little sister… How could I forget the night my parents forced her to eat “just one bite” of liver, and she threw up all over the table. Yeah, Sis!

What’s the first food you remember? Are there any foods you associate with beloved or not-so-beloved family members? Were there any food ceremonies that were part of your childhood? (My father carved the meat at the table every night. I can still hear the swish of his carving knife against the steel.) Now it’s your turn.

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To honor the spirit of upcoming Valentine’s Day, I searched long and hard for the perfect classic-movie romantic couple for our latest “Caption This Pic” game.

And of course I found some great ones: Bogie and Bacall wrapped in a passionate embrace. Scarlett and Rhett silhouetted against a blazing sky. Fred and Ginger dancing light as air in each other’s arms.

But then I came across a photo that offers lots of “scope for imagination,” as Anne of Green Gables would say. Katharine Hepburn with not one but two leading hunks.

Can you imagine having to choose between Cary Grant and Jimmy Stuart for Valentine’s Day? Or is Miz Hepburn even choosing?

If you’ve hung out with us on Mt. Oly for a while, you know how this works. For all you new goddesses…welcome and please jump in! Just look at the pic and write whatever comes to mind.  If you make us laugh, all the better.  And if you make us laugh a lot, you might just win a copy of my latest romance hot off the presses, TO PLEASURE A LADY — also in the spirit of upcoming Valentine’s Day!

So whip up your creative juices and give us your best caption/short scene/or funny comment.

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Your friendly goddesses are tickled to announce that this Thursday and Friday, Guest Goddess Susan Elizabeth Phillips is coming to visit!

We’re all eagerly awaiting the paperback release on April 29th of Susan’s smash hit, NATURAL BORN CHARMER! Susan is a highly respected author in the publishing industry and when the Mt. Oly goddesses found out she had accepted our humbly offered invitation to blog, a collective Fan Girl sigh escaped us all.

I mean, SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS! WOW!!!

If you haven’t yet read an SEP book, let me encourage you to do so NOW. You will immediately know why Susan is considered a goddess in her own right! To find out more about SEP before she comes to visit us (YAHHHHHH!), check out her website!

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I went to the doctor yesterday for my annual checkup and found myself facing A Dragon Nurse.

Now I know a lot about nurses. My grandmother and great grandmother were nurses, as is my Dh’s sister (Hi, Becky!) and so I am no Nurse Virgin. That said, I don’t pretend to have any sort of medical knowledge. I don’t and they do. That’s something I’m not likely to forget and I respect them and the work they do.

Still, I’m not a pushover softie, either. Here’s what happened as I sat shivering in a paper cape on a cold plastic table:

NURSE (looking at my chart): You didn’t get your blood work.

ME: I had breakfast before I came so they couldn’t take the sample.

NURSE (frowning): You ATE before your appointment?

ME: No one told me not to.

NURSE (sniffs): Most people know that.

ME: My appointment was at 11:30 and it’s 12:30 now. You couldn’t expect me not to eat or drink anything until now.

NURSE (proudly): We’ve had people who’ve had appointments at 2 and didn’t eat or drink.

ME: Fascinating. Did they pass out in here, or in the waiting room?

Needless to say, the nurse snapped my folder closed, suggested in a chilly voice that PERHAPS the doctor would be with me shortly, and marched from the room.

I had to wait for the doctor, but not for long. He came in and immediately slipped the coldest stethoscope on the planet under the edge of my paper cape. I’m sure the Dragon Nurse put the blasted thing on ice before allowing the doctor in my examination room, but such are the chances one takes for being a smart alec with a nursing professional.

Have you ever met a Dragon Nurse or Doctor? Are you willing to be sassy in return, like me? Or do you fear the Dreaded Ice Stethoscope of Death too much to spout off? And aren’t you glad you don’t have to put up with sassy customers like me all day? Sheesh! What was I thinking? That thing was FREEZING!

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